71 Times Parents Were So Toxic Their Kids Had To Screenshot It For Proof (New Pics)

Having these kinds of conversations with a parent is genuinely painful. There’s something uniquely destabilizing about the person who was supposed to be your safe place being the source of the hurt instead. And while it might feel isolating, the reality is that a staggering number of people are navigating exactly this.

According to Pew Research Center, 18% of young adults describe their relationship with their parents as fair or poor. Meanwhile, a YouGov survey found that over 16% of Americans are actively estranged from a parent, and 10% from a child.

So what actually makes a parent toxic? There are a lot of ways it can manifest, and it isn’t always obvious on the surface, especially when you’re a child living inside it. According to Sherry Gaba, LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist, one of the most telling signs is being constantly and intensely reactive.

As Gaba explains, because toxic parents are emotionally out of control, they tend to dramatize even minor issues and treat any perceived slight as a reason to become hostile or destructive.

Alongside that comes a distinct lack of empathy. Everything revolves around their own needs, and they genuinely struggle to see how their behavior lands on the people around them.

Toxic parents also tend to be deeply controlling. Gaba notes that the more toxic the individual, the more they need to control everything and everyone around them, including making unreasonable demands on their children well into adulthood.

And then there’s the criticism, which can be relentless. No achievement is ever quite enough. A 90 on a test becomes “why not a hundred.” A clean house still isn’t clean enough.

Rather than acknowledge what their children do well, toxic parents find the flaw every time, all while holding themselves up as exceptional by comparison. When things fall apart, the blame lands everywhere except on them.

Growing up inside that dynamic leaves a lasting impact. As psychologist Chivonna Childs, PhD, tells Cleveland Clinic, children in these households often feel constantly trapped, entirely at the mercy of the people who are supposed to care for them.

And because children absorb what they see as normal, many don’t even recognize the behavior as harmful until they’re old enough to have something to compare it to. By that point, a lot of the damage has already taken root.

The long-term effects reach further than most people realize. Dr. Childs points out that toxic behaviors learned in childhood have a way of being passed down and repeated, both in how people treat others and eventually how they parent their own children.

It can also bleed into friendships, romantic relationships, and workplaces—anywhere that requires the kind of give and take that was never modeled at home.

That said, healing is genuinely possible, and it’s worth saying that clearly. Dr. Childs recommends seeking support through therapy to help process the weight of those experiences, as well as working on setting boundaries that communicate what kind of treatment is and isn’t acceptable.

Perhaps most importantly, she encourages focusing on yourself, on who you actually want to be rather than what you were taught to expect from yourself.

“You have to recognize this is not your fault and you can change,” she says. “You can work on being better and being the person you truly want to be.”